Saturday, 22 October 2016

It is extremely puzzling why many of those who
rejected the politics of the Left have so readily accepted –“Right Wing” as
their identity marker and self-definition despite the fact that the term is
used as a pejorative by the Left for any one & everyone who dares differ
with their partisan and authoritarian politics. Moreover, “left” & “right”
are terms borrowed from European history. They have no real equivalence in
Indian history nor are they a reliable guide for understanding India’s contemporary
politics. By allowing the opponent to decide the terms of the battle, including
naming the ideological terrain, we end up as losers even before we have begun
the battle.

As is well known, the political terms Left and Right were coined during the French
Revolution (1789–1799), referring to the seating arrangement in the Estates
General: those who sat on the left generally opposed the monarchy and supported
the revolution, including the creation of a republic and secularization, while
those on the right were supportive of the traditional institutions of the Old
Regime.

The term was later applied to republicanism during the
French Revolution in the 18th century, followed by socialism,[communism,
anarchism, and social democracy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since then, the
term left-wing has been applied to a broad range of movements including civil
rights movements, feminist movements, anti-war movements, and environmental
movements, as well as a wide range of political
formations.

I have no problem if Europeans or Americans who
share a common cultural and ideological heritage feel comfortable using these
constraining, archaic and opaque terms to define their political and social
identities. But they become absolutely nonsensical when applied in a country
like India, which has never witnessed political and social divisions on these
lines.

Intellectual slavery to the West is built into
the DNA of the Left because they have steadfastly borrowed their ideological
paradigms from the West, with Marxism as the core followed by its many hybrids—
modernism, structuralism, deconstructionism, subalternism, post modernism and
so on. But why should those who want to break out of the intellectual slavery
of the West accept as their self-view -the pejorative term “Right Wing” along
with all the negative connotations it is loaded with?

Leftists dub others as “right wing” as a
short hand for damning that person as being anti-poor, pro-rich,
anti-minorities, anti women, anti freedom, anti-progress, trapped in
obscurantism, and anti every positive human value—even though the person may be
guilty of no bigger crime than merely differing with or pointing to serious
factual infirmities in the political narrative chosen by the Left.

Conversely, the leftists assume that by merely
labeling themselves “Left”, they magically acquire for all times to come
unquestioned monopoly over all the positive human traits and progressive values
known to history—never mind that in reality their track record on all these is
mostly disgraceful. In countries or (states within India) where Communists
actually came to power, they wrecked the economy, adopted the most tyrannical
and oppressive systems of governance and in Soviet Union, China, North Korea
etc. carried out genocides against their own people on scales and with
brutality that matched Hitler’s extermination of the Jews.

It is noteworthy that none of the leading social
reformers of 19th century used such terminology for themselves. Even
during the freedom movement, barring leaders of the self professed Communist
parties only a small minority of westernized leaders like Nehru used the term
Leftist for their worldview. The tallest leader of all–namely Mahatma
Gandhi—refused to accept for himself the political binaries presented by
Communists who dubbed him “right wing” even though his pro-poor, pro women, pro
minorities, pro Dalit credentials as well as track record of mobilizing the
people of India against the oppressive colonial regime, were far superior to
that of the entire spectrum of leftists of those days.

But Communists could not stomach Gandhi because
right from its inception, the Communist Party of India made Hindu-bashing as an
essential qualification for being a progressive even while they willingly
pandered to Islamists, including Jinnah’s demand for Partition. A self
respecting Hindu is the biggest threat to “secularism” in the eyes of leftists.
After Narendra Modi’s rise to power their aversion to anything “Hindu” has
assumed pathological dimensions.

Leftists better realize that those who can’t
find a self respecting, self chosen nomenclature for their worldview and
continue aping ideas which have been discarded even by those who first offered
them, are not capable of providing intellectual leadership to their society.
Likewise those of us who don’t wish to live by borrowed, outdated ideologies of
the West, better not accept the abusive terminology of Leftists as our
self-definition. Mahatma Gandhi succeeded in marginalizing the Left in large
part because he refused to let them define the rules of the game or its turf.
That is why today, Leftists in western countries after firmly discarding
Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism etc., seek inspiration from Mahatma
Gandhi.